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Starting new characters may sound good to you, but I already have invested years in the characters I have. For years ccp has been saying race doesn't matter. Now it does and in a substantial way. I don't want to exaggerate this but the difference is substantial. When the overall skills are decreased having the 2 weapon systems becomes even more valuable. This is true due to the way the bonuses work.





Ok I am not sure how what was said above applies. No other races will be able to fly the epithal. And that is the pi ship unless I am missing one. Now yes it does assume we can manage pi as alphas. I would be quite happy if they did not allow pi to continue running on alpha accounts. But because ccp does not seem to have enough handle on the code to allow us to extract pi skills I tend to think we will be able to keep running pi. You say that this is an "edge" case. Again I don't mean to exagerate but pi is a substantial part of the game. To only allow one race to do that efficiently as an alpha clone is significant.

edit: But I do hope they don't allow pi that requires an omega to set up to continue to be run by alphas.

edit2: Just let me pick my racial bonuses for when I am an alpha - problem solved. You can pick minmatar or caldari if you think they are decent.

You are comparing a paid account with a non paid account.

Look when I started my characters they said your race wouldn't matter. Why not just allow us characters who relied on that representation to pick what alpha racial skills will stay with their character? So you can pick the caldari set or gallente set or whatever. Then you would be stuck with that set but at least it was your own choice.

At first I didn't think it mattered much because I thought the alphas would be weak. But if they can do pi and fly around in gnosis ships then they are not really weak at all. Plus flying in cruisers and down is pretty fun anyway. But being stuck in caldari or minmatar or even amarr will suck compared to gallente who can do pi and have a pretty nice blaster gnosis that does almost 600 dps.

Edit: I didn't realize the alphas could use tech 2 damage mods. The damage is easilly over 600 dps for a gallente blaster gnosis. I really think this is a bit too powerful because honestly I think I would rarely sub anymore.

I'm sorry but...WTFAYTA? Race won't matter to an Omega clone. So unless you are thinking of letting current Omega clones going ALPHA (and why on earth would you do that) what does it matter?

If alphas can not do PI that is one thing. But the question Ccp has left open is whether an omega can set up PI and then let the subscription lapse. What then happens? The dev blog says only they will generally take a hands off approach to such matters. Moreover currently you can't extract most PI skills. So I wouldn't be surprised if after an omega sets up a PI system he can let his sub lapse and continue to farm it with the alpa If that's not the case ok. But until we have an answer this thread is to talk about consequences. And if we can do PI gallente have a substantial advantage in the apparent ability to use the epithal.

Gnosis:
[Gnosis, gallente alpha]
Drone Damage Amplifier II
Drone Damage Amplifier II
Magnetic Field Stabilizer II
Magnetic Field Stabilizer II
IFFA Compact Damage Control
Co-Processor II

X-Large Ancillary Shield Booster, Cap Booster 400
Fleeting Compact Stasis Webifier
Initiated Compact Warp Scrambler
Limited Adaptive Invulnerability Field I
10MN Y-S8 Compact Afterburner
50MN Y-T8 Compact Microwarpdrive

Modal Neutron Particle Accelerator I, Caldari Navy Antimatter Charge M
Modal Neutron Particle Accelerator I, Caldari Navy Antimatter Charge M
Modal Neutron Particle Accelerator I, Caldari Navy Antimatter Charge M
[empty high slot]
Modal Neutron Particle Accelerator I, Caldari Navy Antimatter Charge M
Modal Neutron Particle Accelerator I, Caldari Navy Antimatter Charge M

Medium Anti-EM Screen Reinforcer II
Medium Anti-Thermal Screen Reinforcer II
Medium Ancillary Current Router I

Federation Navy Hammerhead x5

I'm not saying this fit is ideal, but it does look good enough already for a free account.

I really am surprised how powerful alphas will be. Whoever decided on the 5 mill sp spent them wisely. If this goes through like it I think, I will be saving probably at least half my sub money. I guess that's good for me but I am doubtful others will make up the difference me and others like me will create. I never thought eve was expensive. But why spend money you really don't have to?

I will just say it would seem easier to add abilities to alphas later than to take them away. For once I am afraid Ccp will lose allot of their income and not make it back. The whole PI thing is sort of a big deal in my personal decision to sub my accounts.


Money.



Yeah it does matter. I am not inclined to pay for my account with alphas being so powerful. I mean that gnosis fit is just a bit less than the ferox fit I have been flying with. Plus I can buy huge amounts of them with the money I save. I don't usually fly things bigger than a bc anyway. Sure some of my alliance fleet stuff will be out, but they will develop alpha doctrines and if we end up in a serious war I can plex the account for the month or 2.

Honestly, like teckos Pech I didn’t realize just how powerful these alphas can be until I started screwing around with eft.


Now I admit I would be sore if alphas can continue to farm pi and only gallente can fly epithals. Basically giving gallente and only gallente pi will be a huge kick to other races - do you agree?

Other than that it’s no big deal. I will just play a gallente alt I have instead of my main.

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Solutions?

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A) One Possibile Solution: Adding some kind of synthethic cost to Alpha clones so they can never compete with Omega Clones.
-> Won't work, even if alpha clones are more expensive than other at producing, there will always be products where the synthethic cost is smaller than Omega Industryjobcost. Numbercrunchers will figure out, numbercrunchers will abuse. Truly new players will feel disadvantaged.

Once again i assume you did already think about this and denied it because the Alphas would feel disadvantaged. The truth is, as long as they are at the same cost of production, the truly new players that want to feel industry will be at a disadvantage due to the advantages an old player Alpha has vs. a new player alpha.

B) What youve choosen: Limit the slots/duration-skills and make it "harder" to actually build up farms. Well, if it's allowed by the rules, I will do it. And i will do it aslong as it gives profit. And I, as an older player will be advanatged over newer players without access to low-sec/null-sec. New Players will get a taste of industry, but not making profit. Do you believe I'm the only player in whole eve that would do that?

C) Removal of the industry functionality for Alpha clones -> Doesnt solve the issue, truly new players should see that feature, its one of the many things i saw as a rookie and that got me hooked. I dont want to take it away from the players but i really want to prevent a change that could lead to that horrible kind of gameplay.

D) Limit the time Alphas can issue an Industryjob, I had that answer twice in a small discussion so I'll add it. It does not prevent old players from building farms, its just more "annoying" and we have to fight harder - but we end up the same. We fight CCP. And neither the developer nor the players should strive for that.

E) Forbid it. I really like this one, altho its not really ´"preventing" it, but it might help more as im still amazed by the amount of people in eve that do follow the rules: Simple as that, forbid creating an account as an exlusive Industry-Job Alpha Account. Now as always, never put up a rule youre not able to enforce . So there have to be ways to distinguish between all the diffrent possibilities of beeing Alpha (New player, old player not paying atm, Old Player having an Scout Alt, Pure Industry user...and so on, just to name a few)

This is alot of work, hard to prove and will lead to mistakes often and alot of players will sneak through.

Yet im pretty sure it will prevent the people that do follow the rules to do it and it will prevent people doing it in huge-scale which would actually have an impact on the market.

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Its a huge topic that has to be thought of very very carefully, account in all kind of people playing eve and how this all would affect all parties, the new, the old and the creators.

But the quote from Devblog "EVE is ready for this." is not correct. EVE is ready to talk about it, EVE is ready to think of as a whole community how to round off the corners

Those are all fair answers. I think we disagree on the importance of the gnosis. But I admit it's possible that they will become prohibitively expensive in the future. Plus some of the navy cruisers and other ships are still pretty strong and not as unbalanced as the gnosis ends up being.

We can agree to disagree on whether alphas are too strong. As much as I am happy to save the few hundred dollars I spend on subscriptions every year, I think for ccp's good they should tone them down. Maybe cruiser 3 instead of cruiser 4 and also maybe only meta damage mods - I don't have enough information to give a full answer. But I think allot of people will be just fine saving money and not flying the blingy ships.

I also think pi on more than one planet with the advanced skills should be a no go even if you set up the pi as an alpha.
My question was about pi in particular. I doubt you do pi because if you did you know how important the epithal is. There are some ifs in what I say. I assume the alphas will be able to access the pi factories etc. But if they are able to access them (honestly I hope they won't be able to access pi - for ccps sake) then ccp should do something about the epithal. Either give other races an equivalent ship, or allow all to fly the epithal, or let us pick our alpha race set, etc..

In eft you can use them when you plug in the gallente alpha skills.

I would say you probably can use them but it is not confirmed.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Eve/comments/50ml92/can_alpha_clones_fly_a_gnosis/

Gnosis is not a cruiser destroyer or frigate yet alphas can fly it. So the logic seems to be as long as you have the skills you can fly it regardless of that initial claimed restraint. But again its not confirmed.

In all the feedback I have not even gotten the sense that ccp is aware of an issue with pi. They have not even so much have said "yeah we are still not sure what we will do with PI."

Your idea of limiting the skills to destroyers or frigates seems good to me.

Or they could allow new players to go up to slightly higher levels for the first 6 months or something (maybe even cruiser 5) call it a beta clone and then after 6 months things would go back down to alpha clone with lower skills. I really think they are going to lose allot of subs with alphas being this strong.


But then again omegas can probably plex their account just by skill training and selling injectors. But then again that market is beginning to settle in where it is not so profitable and who knows what will happen to plex prices. My *guess* is subscriptions will drop dramatically and plex prices will go up because more people will just want omegas for a month or so.

The guy from industry has concerns and I am not familiar with that. But I wonder if you can put very long jobs in with your omega and then just use a plex every 3 months or so.

trade alts might be able to put trades in as an omega and then just use a plex before the 90 days expires. In the meantime I think they can still modify their trades. So again there would be little point in subbing for more than a month every now and then. Same with PI.


I hope ccp is thinking this through better than their dev blogs let on. Something like this could drop them in the red real fast.

What I meant by would kill the Gnosis build is if you drop Cruisers from Alphas then you would lose med mods too... you gonna fly a Gnosis with only small mods?

The problem would be neckbeards with 200 alphas running pi. And if alphas can run strip mining planets then they likely can run factory planets after they are set up as an omega. The planetology and adv planetology skills have no value for factory planets so alphas would actually be best suited for those.

The unemployed would kill the game for those of us who try to occasionally do some work for a living.


As much as i would like to say give an alpha a single planet and be able to run it with command 4 but without interplanetary connections, there will be guys who make a hundred accounts and each alpha would run a planet. I hope ccp realizes 1) lots of their subs are due to pi and 2) running pi isn't really what new players join eve for anyway. Allowing alphas to run pi will just mean cheap vets with no life or money, will drive the rest out.

Wow, not a terrible idea...